which marks the men set apart in the distant corners of the world. Amongst the people who strolled past him, one, however, smiled, and, as he rose from his chair, Mrs. Adair came to his side. She looked him over from head to foot with a quick and almost furtive glance which might have told even Durrance something of the place which he held in her thoughts. She was comparing him with the picture which she had of him now three years old. She was looking for the small marks of change which those three years might have brought about, and with eyes of apprehension. But Durrance only noticed that she was dressed in black. She understood the question in his mind and answered it.

"My husband died eighteen months ago," she explained in a quiet voice. "He was thrown from his horse during a run with the Pytchley. He was killed at once."

"I had not heard," Durrance answered awkwardly. "I am very sorry."

Mrs. Adair took a chair beside him and did not reply. She was a woman of perplexing silences; and her pale and placid face, with its cold correct outline, gave no clue to the thoughts with which she occupied them. She sat without stirring. Durrance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adair as a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evident affection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon him he had never up till now considered. Mr. Adair indeed had been at the best a shadowy figure in that small household, and Durrance found it difficult even to draw upon his recollections for any full expression of regret. He gave up the attempt and asked:—

"Are Harry Feversham and his wife in town?"

Mrs. Adair was slow to reply.

"Not yet," she said, after a pause, but immediately she corrected herself, and said a little hurriedly, "I mean—the marriage never took place."

Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he was, his surprise was not expressed in exclamations.

"I don't think that I understand. Why did it never take place?" he asked. Mrs. Adair looked sharply at him, as though inquiring for the reason of his deliberate tones.

"I don't know why," she said. "Ethne can keep a secret if she wishes," and Durrance nodded his assent. "The marriage was broken off on the night of a dance at Lennon House."

Durrance turned at once to her.

"Just before I left 

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